Nigerian & Ghanaian Children Farmed Out to White Family in Britain

By Kemi Seriki

History will judge by the difference we make in the everyday lives of children By Nelson Mandela

In 2019, I came across a short YouTube video titled Farming, and what lured me into watching this short clip was the sub-heading famed out to a white family. I never understood or came across such a phrase and the connection to the movie director Adewale Akinnoye-Agbaje. The firm was based on an incredible story of Akinnoye-Agbaje’s account as a foster child farmed out when he was few months old by his Nigerian parent to a white family in the 1970s. Akinnoye-Agbaje spent his childhood in a racist part of Tilbury, Essex, where he experienced brutal racial trauma both from his white parents and racist skinhead in the neighborhood. His foster mother urges him to shoplift for her to gain her love and attention. The foster father would not defend him against the racist tyrants in the neighborhood but instead required that he goes out to defend himself. It was disheartening to see that to survive his childhood, he must join a skinhead gang controlled by white supremacists. Agbaje indicated in his report that his foster mother raised at least ten other Nigerian children. He affirmed that the foster mother also raised his two younger sisters, and they were the only “black faces in the area.” One could imagine that the children may be racially traumatized within the strange home and the unusual community they never belonged.

I was stunned when I watched this firm’s preview. I could not have imagined that his Nigerian parents would have placed their own children in such an environment without thinking about the child’s emotional detriment in the future. I was unsure if this practice was common amongst Nigerian students studying in Britain during Agbaje’s formative years and if the tradition still continues. In the 1960s and 1970s, I was aware that many Nigerian men won scholarships to study in Britain. Some of these men went with their wives, and some traveled alone. When returning to Nigeria, some of the expatriates come back home with their children. And, I have heard of some who left their children with Nannies in England. I could never have imagined that these children were placed with white families, and the parents were not thinking about the psychological trauma associated with such placement. This story was unsettling for me, and I wanted to find out more about it.

Before I took the liberty of writing about this subject, I read a beautifully written novel titled, That Reminds Me by Derek Owusu. In his account, Owusu combines storytelling with poetry in expressing the traumatic childhood experience of K, the main character in the novel. As Owusu narrated, K was born in London to Ghanaian parents, and before he marked his first birthday, his parents placed him in foster care with a white family in Suffolk. At the age of eleven, K. returned to an unfamiliar home to a mother K. barely knew and a father who was hardly available both physically and emotionally to his family. Metaphorically, K. questioned why his mother gave him away at a tender age to a white family whose lives are entirely different and why she brought him back to another unfamiliar environment. As he struggles to adjust to his new environment, K questioned his father’s emotional disconnection from his family. As he wrote, “I ask why he didn’t show us love, behave like the father who teased me as a child.” As the father responded, “K, I’m incapable.” Father was also a wounded soul with a broken spirit, and he was unable to connect emotionally with his wife and his children.

As K. struggles with his identity, tumultuous childhood experience, poverty, he also dealt with mental illness. In a deep state of sadness and feeling of worthlessness, he self-mutilates and self-medicated with alcohol to temporarily release his inner pain that would eventually come back after he sobers. After a series of suicide attempts, K was diagnosed with a borderline personality disorder. Symeon Brown, a British reporter, interviewed Owusu on the impact of being fostered away to a white family and on his diagnosis of BPD. Owusu explained that his therapist further educates him about his diagnose and the commonality of such diagnoses on children placed in such environment. His therapist explained to him that many kids who are farmed out develop this type of disorder because it comes down to attachment and being ripped away from one parent’s home to another.

To further expand my knowledge about this topic and understand the historical aspect of this placement, I sought to research more about the phenomena of black children placed in the white family’s care in rural London by their parents. As I explore finding a research journal written on this topic, there was limited research on this topic. I did come across a reliable journal article published in 2009 by The University of Chicago Press on The Postcolonial Family? West African Children, Private Fostering and the British State by Jordanna Bailkin. I also came across other personal stories of men and women raised in white foster homes. As I continue to probe on this subject, I found out that most of the children farmed-out were from parents of Nigerian origin, and few were Ghanaians. So, to be specific and not categorizing other west African countries into this dilemma, no other West African countries were mentioned in the reading materials. In the journal, the reasons parents provided for such placement was that the children would benefit from superior education and obtain mannerism of English lifestyle while the parents focus on schooling and working. My question is, why having children when you are not ready to be a parent.

Buchi Emecheta was a Nigerian author, and her publication of Second-Class Citizen published in 1975 was based on her observation of the Nigerians in Britain. The following statement sums up many Nigerians’ lives in that era. Francis, the main character, was scolding his wife Adah and pressuring her to foster their children away to an English woman. The following statement shows the intensity of the practice within the Nigerian community in Britain.

“You mean you decided; you thought it all out, and then you tell me what I’m going to do. Everyone laughs at us in this place. No African child lives with parents. It is not convenient; it is not possible. There is no accommodation for it. Moreover, they won’t learn good English. They are much better off with an English woman.”

Adah’s view on Nigerian women, “This is all right for the Nigerian wife who, for the first time, was tasting the real freedom of being a wife. She was free from the hindering influences of her kith and kin, and she was free to work and earn money. Any type of work do: cleaning, packing goods in a factory, being a bus conductor; all sorts of things. The money she thus earned went partly to the foster-mother, and the rest was blown on colourful outfits from some big department store.”

Historical Perspective on Unsettling Placement

As many colonized African nations began gaining their independence from Britain and many other European countries, Nigerians and Ghanaians seize on the opportunities to study in Britain both with and without government scholarships. According to Bailkin, the British government was concerned about African students’ emotional state and changes in their attitude towards their former spouses when they return to their respective countries. J.A.G Griffiths, the secretary of state for British colonies in 1951, said, “students who have come to this country, finding, on their return to the Colonies, that their outlook has altered so much that it is rather difficult to live with their wives when they return.” As a result, the British government encourages married students to bring their wife and children along to address this issue without realizing that they may be creating another problem. As the saying goes, “many were called, but few were chosen.” Not all who traveled to England to study ended up completing their education, and many did not register to attend school.

As the population of West African students and their family grows, so are the difficulties of navigating through the unknown territory and a new system. The report indicated both students and non-students from west Africans frequently place their children in private fostering arrangements for £3 weekly. Most West African parents were reported to be residing in London, but their children were reportedly placed in a rural areas such as Surrey, East Sussex, Hertfordshire, Essex, and Kent. Since the government does not regulate this arrangement, foster mothers are usually found through individual referrals or advertisements placed in magazines or posters in public places. According to The Times of London, in 1968, about five thousand children were placed in a private foster home by their African parents.

Bailkin reported that later in 1960, the British government was becoming unsettling with the idea of transracial fostering. In Kent County alone, the government spent about £15,000 yearly on the problem linked to this issue. Between 1961 and 1964, eighteen African children died in private foster and at the same time, there was a massive publication in the media on child abuse and child neglect cases. In the same report, Bailkin established the emotional and physical health suffered by these children. As he stated, “Nigerian doctors reported that privately fostered children were returning to Africa in poor mental and physical health, and British welfare workers linked private fostering to developmental problems, including delayed speech and an inability to form relationships”. Due to all these development, the British authority reverses its initial statement by discouraging the male student from bringing their wives and children. For children who were born in Britain, parents were encouraged to “put the welfare of the children above their studies or job” to prevent placing the children in foster care. But, private foster care did not subside but continues to grow. In 1974, over six thousand West African children were reportedly placed in private foster care, and the number continues to grow until the present time.

Conclusion

I could not wrap my head around such a horrifying act of an able body parent who famed away a new baby to a white family in unfamiliar territory. I kept thinking about how much African culture and tradition cherish children. Africans dedicate so many proverbs and songs to express the essence of having children. The gift of having a child and being called a father or a mother is wildly shared believes as one of the extraordinary life achievements. Sometimes, society tends to shame and blame a woman who cannot conceive a child even if it is not biologically her fault. We say, “children are the reward of life,” and sometimes we tend to challenge the dedication that comes with parenting. We pray and seek every aspect of avenues to conceive a child and then give the child away due to sometimes self-interest without foreseeing the future damages such decision may have on the child. To be a father or a mother is not about boasting that someone has a child. It is also about being present in a child’s life, both financially and emotionally.

Please listen to my interview with Taiwo Ogunniake – William on her experience as a foster child on Pansa Pansa Live Podcast Episode 14.

To read more about the personal stories of foster care survivals, please click below.

https://www.channel4.com/news/the-west-african-children-brought-up-by-white-foster-families-in-the-english-countryside

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/sep/08/adewale-akinnuoye-agbaje-my-life-as-black-skinhead-farming-film

https://www.buzzfeed.com/adeonibada/farming-foster-care-black-children-white-families

Book: Ibironke John – Happy Memories of being privately fostered